During a sunset session at Hendry’s Beach, a surf break in Santa Barbara, photographer Morgan Maassen captured the unexpected intimacy of being afloat in the vast Pacific. This shot of his own hand skimming the water isn’t your typical surf image (no barrels, slick cutbacks, or dramatic wipeouts)—but it draws you in nonetheless. As he travels around the world documenting surf culture, Maassen strives to get at the heart of why most surfers surf: to find that sense of peace, that almost meditative state which comes with gliding along the surface of an unpredictable force of nature. “Surfing and being in the ocean is a sort of drug,” Maassen says. “It’s a very real escape from our land-based reality, an experience so euphoric, there’s nothing like it.”